About The ProductionTerminator 3: Rise of the Machines began its ambitious
100-day schedule filming in and around the Los Angeles area on April 14, 2002.
"The first night of shooting, Arnold came out of his trailer in his
Terminator wardrobe, with the leather jacket, the sunglasses and the big
shotgun," describes Mostow. "He walks onto the set to do his first
scene, and I turned to everybody and said, âNow we're making a Terminator
movie.'"

Schwarzenegger further impressed the filmmakers, cast and
crew with his awesome physicality and exacting preparation. "When we
started filming, Arnold was the exact same dimensions that he was when he did T2,"
Mostow says of Schwarzenegger, whose black leather jacket from the film fit him
like a glove. "That's not special effects. That's just old-fashioned
working out."

"I was very excited to do the work that it takes to be
in the same shape I was in when I made the previous Terminator
films," says Schwarzenegger of his three-to-five hour daily pre-production
workouts. (To stay in peak physical condition throughout production, he worked
out every day during his lunch break.) "Working out, rehearsing the scenes,
preparing for the stunts â all of those things were a great pleasure for
me."

Schwarzenegger feels his character suits him as well as the
physicality he perfected for the role. "The first scene I shot in the first
Terminator movie was a night scene, and I was sitting in a police
car," Schwarzenegger remembers. "My eyebrows were shaved off, and I
had hair and makeup effects to simulate that I'd been through the fire. And
Jim Cameron came up to me and said, âIt's like you've played this
character for years, you're so locked into the Terminator.' That's exactly
the way I felt on Terminator 3. The first night I came on set, I felt
like I had been shooting the movie for six months. I loved stepping back into
this character."

As always, the actor relished the challenge of doing much of
his own stuntwork. "Because of my continuous training and weight lifting
throughout my life," Schwarzenegger says, "I've always been prepared
for the physical aspect of these movies, and I enjoy the challenge. To me, each
stunt is always an exciting new adventure."

Some of the most elaborate, intricately choreographed stunts
in the film are featured in a furious high-speed chase sequence in which the T-X
maneuvers a 100-ton crane through city streets, swinging the crane arm into a
fire engine and then into a glass building as the Terminator hangs on with
trademark tenacity. The riveting sequence, designed by Mostow and stunt
coordinator Simon Crane, was filmed on a quarter mile long street set built from
the ground up at the Boeing Plant in Downey, California. Fourteen cameras were
used to shoot the Terminator slamming into the glass building on the crane arm,
because like many of the stunts executed for the chase, there were no retakes.

"Every movie you do, an image sticks with you, and I
will always remember the weeks that I spent hanging on the hook of that huge
monster crane, getting dragged behind it and smashed into things,"
Schwarzenegger says amiably. "It was unbelievable. We used every safety
precaution, but there were close calls, many times."

"Without the expertise and synchronicity of all the
production departments," Crane attests, "pulling off a dangerous stunt
of this magnitude would have been impossible."

It took four weeks to rehearse and two weeks to shoot the
climactic mano-a-mano showdown between the Terminator and the T-X. Staged in a
marble and steel bathroom, the battle was designed to c